


Strange Little Girl

by IrenaK



Category: Snow White and the Huntsman (2012), Snow White – All Media Types
Genre: Challenge Response, Female Protagonist, Multi, OT3, Yuletide, happily ever after can be complicated sometimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-23
Updated: 2012-12-23
Packaged: 2017-11-22 02:09:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/604651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IrenaK/pseuds/IrenaK
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Snow White finds the wine cellar, teaches some old birds new tricks and thinks purity might be a bit overrated. </p><p>But not necessarily in that order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strange Little Girl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [greyson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/greyson/gifts).
  * Translation into Русский available: [Странная девочка](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2538818) by [k8Cathy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/k8Cathy/pseuds/k8Cathy)



> Huge, huge thanks go to Jaina for a last minute emergency beta.

Snow White watched as the diplomatic emissary swept out of the room, then slumped down in her chair in a way that could not be mistaken for dignified.  
  
“I've insulted them,” she said and buried her head in her hands.  
  
“No, not at all,” William said at the same time his father admitted, “Perhaps a bit.”  
  
She grimaced at the conflicting observations, not quite resisting the urge to rub at her eyes, swollen and sleep-deprived as they were. “Please don't be dishonest with me. There's no queen so ineffective as the one who hears only what others believe she wants to hear.”  
  
William frowned, looking put out but Duke Hammond crossed his arms and did as asked. “Yes, you likely have, but not in such a way that it isn't reparable. And, frankly, you're new to this. Dignity and tact will come with time.”  
  
She smiled a little. “You sound like my father.” The smile turned a bit sharper. “Do you think they'd be more understanding if we told them my manners were atrocious on account of coming of age in a tower cell?”  
  
She meant it as a dark joke – gallows humor was one of the few luxuries she'd had for years – but the expression on William's face made her regret the words almost immediately. “Oh, Will, I didn't -”  
  
“No, it's – you're quite..” He trailed off, shaken and pale. He bowed stiffly, taking refuge in formalities. “If you'll pardon me, your Highness.” When he walked out, the echo of the door closing behind him made her feel small and stupid.  
  
“He shouldn't blame himself,” she said.  
  
“I know,” Hammond answered.  
  
“He _shouldn't_ ,” she said again, because she didn't think he really understood.  
  
“Yes, of course.” But underneath his agreement lay the unspoken truth. _But he does. As do I, for my part._  
  
She wondered if that would go away eventually, the guilt of all those who surrounded her, or if she would be followed by it forevermore, a ghost as unshakable as any shadow.  
  
***  
  
She found that there were still lessons she remembered from her childhood – how to present a meal, how to make proper introductions, who had inherited the lands to the south of their borders and the exact family tree line that made them cousins several times removed.  
  
And then suddenly something would come about and she would realize how much she had missed, how much knowledge she lacked from her imprisonment and was left to flounder on her own. Her discomfort with physical touch and proximity. Her sorrow at seeing the body of a small, dead mouse, a brief reminder of companions to a sad, lonely girl in times gone past. The way words suddenly seemed to seize in her chest and sputter to a stumbling halt, their meanings abruptly lost. The tendency she had to focus absolutely on some small detail – a rose in her mother's old garden finally blooming again, two robins darting around each other outside the window – only to realize a minister had been trying to attract her attention for an extended time.  
  
They called her a good queen, she heard.  
  
But a bit odd, she almost always heard immediately thereafter.  
  
She wasn’t sure she could argue with that.  
  
***  
  
The seamstress – Margaret she was called – was undoubtedly skilled, the cinched bodice fitting her expertly and the full skirt falling to just touch the floor.  
  
Snow looked at herself in the mirror and could only say, “It's, ah, very white.”  
  
Margaret smiled, pinning another one of the sleeves back. “Your dark hair and pale skin, it helps to set off the coloring, yes?”  
  
Snow did not snap that she was pale because the only light she had seen for years on end came from a narrow window facing north. She did not point out that white showed every imperfection and stain and tear, whether one willed it or not. She did not say that in her mind, white was the color of death and that almost all she loved was taken from her when the ground was blanketed with it, that she had woken from a funeral bed draped in it and looking at herself in the mirror now left her shaken and cold and a little ill.  
  
She smiled a fake, sickly thing and said, “It's lovely.” Margaret grinned, seeming quite pleased. Snow resolved to keep her on, while leaving instructions to limit her to particular shades.  
  
The dress, she thought, would look quite pretty as she burned it in her private quarters.  
  
***  
  
She worked hard to overcome her shortcomings and gaps in knowledge, to become the fair and just leader Ravenna had been incapable of being. She nodded and curtsied and decreed and inspected the harvests and oversaw arbitration and was everything a people could ask of their queen.  
  
And then sometimes the world closed in around her, the walls of the castle taking on the form and shape of a prison instead, her advisers transformed into guards. She would retire to her chambers and collapse against the bed, her breaths coming out in harsh, sobbing gasps, feeling as if she was getting too much air and then feeling like it was never enough. The world was limited to her, trapping her as much by destiny as any tower ever had.  
  
The forest at those times seemed closer than ever before and if there was a moment when no one was looking she would slip away to it, driving her horse nearly to exhaustion before she tumbled off and lay on a bed of leaves that suited her more than a soft, downy mattress ever could. The air here was crisper and cleaner and the trees towered into a sky without end and for a brief time, she felt truly free.  
  
Inevitably, they would send someone to retrieve her but it was only the Huntsman who ever succeeded. He would reach out a hand for her to grasp and for a moment, she would stand encircled by his arms as he pulled her up.  
  
She had no choice but to follow him back to the castle, but she could never quite bring herself to resent him for it.  
  
***  
  
The magpie poked at her shoe irritably, trying to retrieve the gold thread from the embroidery and finding its attempts stymied by the skill of her cobbler.  
  
“Pretty bird,” Snow cooed at it. “Pretty bird, pretty bird, pretty bird.”  
  
“What are you doing?” The deep, familiar voice sounded bemused and she looked back to see the Huntsman staring with something like suspicion at a second magpie that seemed fascinated by the buttons on his vest.  
  
“Teaching him new words,” she answered. “He already knows his name.”  
  
As if to illustrate this, the magpie looked up and chirped, “Roland, Roland,” at her before absorbing himself once again in the task of unraveling her shoes.  
  
“That's a bit disturbing,” he said. The second magpie – Roland's mate – tried to seize a button, only to nearly be cuffed upside the head. She squawked at him in protest and fluttered up to a branch immediately hanging above Snow's head, feathers puffed up and ruffled with irritation.  
  
The young queen grinned. “Nonsense. They're clever.” She patted the stone bench she sat on and with a heaved sigh, he settled in next to her. Always acting as if he had someplace better to be, her Huntsman.  
  
And he was, by no stretch of the imagination, hers completely. She had his name and she had, possibly, his heart, and the thought frightened her just enough that she kept to referring him by title even now. It helped a little, but not as much as she suspected it should.  
  
“Roland,” the magpie on the ground insisted again, then took to grooming his tailfeathers, chirping and whistling to keep himself entertained.  
  
“Most would view a flock of magpies kept on the grounds as a bad omen,” the Huntsman pointed out, the edge of his knee touching her own.  
  
“Those people aren't me.”  
  
The bird above their heads squawked and in a magpie's sweet, childish voice announced, “Bugger off, ya focker.”  
  
“Our gardeners being a case in point,” she added.  
  
The expression on his face was enough to pull a rare laugh from her and if her hand slid against his briefly, well, who was there to criticize their queen?  
  
***  
  
Sometimes she returned to the sanctuary of the Fair Folk, walking through the grassy fields without shoes and sitting beside the pond with her feet dangling in the water. No matter the time of year it was always a precise, comfortable temperature, never too hot or cold.  
  
Sometimes she would see small birds she thought might actually be true fairies and sometimes she saw their circles lit up with thousands of abnormally bright fireflies. Sometimes she saw the ancient moss-covered tortoise walking along the periphery of her vision and sometimes she saw the tall mushrooms rustle amongst themselves even when there was no wind.  
  
She never saw the one thing she longed to see with all her heart though, the great white stag that had once called to her without words and allowed her to bow to it. She thought perhaps she might spend the rest of her life looking for it, always keeping one eye to the present and one eye toward the deep, dark woods.  
  
She recognized the danger of this habit and so never lingered long among the fairies and fireflies and old, lumbering beasts. The Spirits there were wise, but they concerned themselves little with the affairs of mortals and a limited ever-dying creature such as herself could lose oneself there if they weren't careful.  
  
Spirits had all of time to attend to. She only had the one life to right so many wrongs.  
  
***  
  
The Huntsman came upon her hidden in the cellars, empty bottles of Ravenna's private store scattered around her.  
  
She grinned at him. “You found me! Bravo!”  
  
He blinked several times and hunkered down next to her. “Are you drunk?”  
  
“Pffft. Queens don't get drunk, we're far too dignified for that.” She studied the bottle in her hand, contemplating the writing on the aged label, which seemed to have magically shrunk sometime between her first sip and now. “We merely – merely...ah...”  
  
“Stumble into your cups?” he suggested.  
  
“We don't stumble, either.”  
  
“I see. No doubt the reason you're on the floor then,” he said, voice as dry as the desert wind.  
  
“The world refused to stay still in a sensible fashion. I thought it better to sit.”  
  
“Of course.” He placed a hand on her shoulder. She'd always liked his hands, big and scarred and ever-so-careful when he touched her. “Maybe you'd like to continue doing so in your sitting room.”  
  
“Already sitting.”  
  
“Yes, but I'm an old man with bad knees that dislike damp cellars.”  
  
“You're not old,” she told him, even as he ignored her protests and lifted her to her feet. The floor wobbled alarmingly, but she could to stay upright so long as she leaned on his broad frame. “Oh, would you like something to drink?” She waved at the rows of bottles gathering dust around them. “My – my stepmother may have been a – a grand-high _bitch_ , but she had excellent taste in wine.”  
  
“Such language.” He sounded amused.  
  
“I had no one but military guards to speak to for years. I know how to say son-of-a-whore in six languages.” She felt quite proud of this accomplishment.  
  
“I see.” Their first few steps did not result in her falling flat in her face and, apparently encouraged by this, he guided her up the stairs at a careful pace. “Dare I ask why you suddenly decided to drink your way through the entire royal wine collection?”  
  
She stayed silent for a long moment, concentrating instead on watching her feet. Looking ahead for too long a period of time made her dizzy.  
  
“Because I've never done it before. It's all very strange and unpleasant at first, but it improves considerably after you make it halfway through your first bottle.”  
  
His arm tightened ever so slightly against her shoulders. “No other reason?”  
  
“No.” But it felt too much like a lie and she disliked that his presence would force one from her, so she said, “If you are allowed to drown your sorrows, am I not permitted to do so as well?”  
  
“And what sorrows would a queen have that drink is her sole refuge?” It almost sounded like he might be mocking her, but when she looked up, she saw only kindness in his eyes and a set, serious line to his mouth.  
  
She sighed, muttered an answer and when he said “What?” she snorted and said, with considerably more volume, “I've been advised to produce an heir at my earliest convenience so as to stabilize my position.”  
  
His surprise was only evident in the slight hitch of his step. “Ah,” he said.  
  
Then, “Wouldn't you need a prince regent and marriage to go along with that?”  
  
“Technically, no, though I think it's being encouraged. Oh yes, speaking of which, I meant to ask, would you like to lay with me tonight as a man?”  
  
He abruptly let go of her. She frowned to find herself on the floor again and when she looked up at him, he had the most peculiar expression on his face, as if she had without warning suddenly sprouted antlers. She tried to surreptitiously check the crown of her head to ensure this was not the case.  
  
He seemed to take an inordinately long time to say, “I think I should pretend you never said that.”  
  
“Why? Do you find me unattractive?”  
  
“Princess -” He stopped himself, grimaced, started over. “Your Highness -”  
  
“Or is my company displeasing? I thought you liked me.”  
  
He rubbed his hands down his face, sighed, then assisted her to her feet once more. “I believe this conversation to be ill-advised.”  
  
“Are you worried I'm unfamiliar with the concept of rutting? I assure you I know the mechanics. And I've seen several pictures.”  
  
“I dread asking how that came about.”  
  
Military guards surrounding her through the arrival of her womanhood and old mercenaries assigned to her tower and Finn, staring at her in ways he shouldn't.  
  
She thought perhaps everyone had very much the wrong idea about her purity.  
  
So she said, “I've been told it is more pleasant with someone you like. Have I been misinformed?”  
  
He refused to answer for so long she wondered if she had shocked him into permanent silence.  
  
“No,” he said quietly. “No, you have not been.”  
  
“So, it's settled then. We will lie together, I shall produce a pleasing heir and those dreadful old men can cease to prattle on about my virginity.”  
  
“I don't think I've actually agreed to any of this.”  
  
“Would it help if I decreed it? I can ensure a document with an official seal on it.”  
  
“For what?” a new voice intruded.  
  
“Will!” How excellent to find her second favorite person in the whole world there. Her Huntsman thought so too, as he muttered, “Oh thank god.”  
  
She yanked him down and whispered, “Should we invite him along tonight? I've seen a picture of that as well and I always wanted to know how all those limbs managed to fit together.”  
  
The Huntsman made a choked, baffled noise, then said too loudly for her taste, “William, would you care to assist me with Her Highness? She isn't feeling well.”  
  
“I see.” The younger man slung her unaccompanied arm over his shoulder. She thought they both looked a bit uncomfortable, such tall men having to bend over to accommodate her petite frame.  
  
“Your idea?” William asked over her head. The Huntsman snorted.  
  
“All hers.”  
  
“I come up with excellent ideas,” she said. “Everyone says so.”  
  
She was then promptly sick all over the floor.  
  
William, kind soul, held her hair back for her as she emptied her stomach. The Huntsman slipped away to find a chambermaid to assist him with cleaning up the mess.  
  
***  
  
Innocence, she believed, was a concept that seemed more abstract than real. To wit:  
  
Her fist bleed had been unpleasant but not unexpected. Her guard at the time – a grizzled former mercenary with a gimpy leg and bad eye named Henri – had been in a far more panicked state when she calmly asked for extra linen to sop up the blood for the next few days, if he didn't mind. He spent the next few hours apparently operating under the impression that a prisoner of royal blood would shortly hemorrhage to death under his watch until someone took pity on him and explained why precisely the princess was turning over bloody clothing to him. For all she knew, it could have been Ravenna herself who explained that she had become a woman, as all girls eventually must.  
  
But Snow had been raised by Eleanor, not Ravenna, and Eleanor had had a difficult pregnancy, followed by an even more difficult birth. She had ensured her daughter and all ladies of the court were familiar with basic midwifery. Before – well, before, Snow had even assisted with two births. Messy but interesting experiences. She had no idea why William grew so concerned when he scraped his knees deep enough to bleed.  
  
Perhaps that was what innocence was. Not knowing she should know to be ashamed. Not knowing she should be scared.  
  
It actually explained the incident with the troll quite a bit, now that she thought about it.  
  
***  
  
She huddled with William behind a tree, his archer's eyes on a hare trap a dozen yards in front of them, her own on his lanky form.  
  
“Do you really not remember fighting with me over the apple tree?” she asked.  
  
He started, glancing back at her with something that wasn't quite a glare. “Are you _trying_ to scare off all the game?”  
  
“Sod the rabbits, William, this is important.” She hugged her knees, enjoying the feel of the leather breeches under her hands, a welcome change from the constrained gowns she had to wear in court. “She knew enough in the Duke's woods to fool me with ease. Do you remember fighting or not?”  
  
His eyes flicked back to the trap and stayed there, silence she supposed as good an answer as any. She felt oddly disappointed.  
  
“Very well, then.” She rose, trying to ignore her stiff knees and aching heart, brushing the debris from the back of her trousers. “I'm heading back to camp.”  
  
She had taken only two steps when she heard, “Snow, wait.”  
  
She turned. He still remained under the tree, but he had slumped back against the trunk. He twisted his hands together, those clever fingers knotted over each other.  
  
“We -” He stopped, took a breath, could not meet her eyes. “We were children and we fought like children, but then the soldiers came and my father dragged me away and all I could think was, 'If we hadn't fought that day, maybe he would have waited just a moment longer.' Because he was angry with me over it, you see, impatient for me to do as he said, and you paid the price.”  
  
She walked back over to him, sat down so her head rested on his shoulder. “You didn't leave me.”  
  
“You've said that before.”  
  
“I say it because it's true. I wish there was some way you would start to believe it.”  
  
The next breath he took was shaky as was the one after that. She clasped his hands with her own and tried through some pure method of will to ease his pain. But for all the power she wielded, that was something beyond her capabilities.  
  
When they arrived back at the hunter's camp, the red around his eyes was barely visible and no one would dare comment on how utterly soul-weary their young queen looked.  
  
***  
  
There were days when she pitied Ravenna, a woman terribly used by the people in her life. She held onto power with vicious tenacity, yet could barely at the best of times tell friend from foe, so twisted up in her own pain was she. It hurt to think on it.  
  
Then there were other days, when she wished could find some form of dark magic to resurrect the old queen, solely to have the pleasure of stabbing her in the heart once more.  
  
***  
  
They were talking about securing the right of succession again. She wanted to scream and throw something at a wall just to hear it break and thought perhaps that was a sign she should seek counsel elsewhere.  
  
Muir wasn't often in the castle proper anymore, busy as he was overlooking the reclaimed mines of the dwarfs. But there were still times he could be found by the fire in the great room, sitting in a scaled down chair and fussing over the wolfhounds. For animals that all but towered over him when standing, they were all too happy lay at his feet and let him scratch behind their ears.  
  
She settled herself in the chair across from him, stretching her feet toward the fire's heat, thankful he was one of the few people she could afford to fully relax in front of.  
  
“Hello there, Muir,” she said.  
  
His head turned in her direction, unseeing eyes settling somewhere to the left of her face. “My lady.”  
  
“How go the cave explorations? Is Duir still out there?”  
  
“It goes well, if slowly. The lines of gold are deeper now, after the Dark Queen's exploitation, but we've managed.” One of the hounds snuffled, pushing at his hand and he rewarded it with a scratch under its chin. The hound's tail made muffled thumps as it wagged against the bearskin rug. “Duir has left to travel to our kin in the north. He hopes to seek out a wife.”  
  
“Really?” A smile touched the corners of her mouth. “I hadn't expected that. If he has any luck, I hope he'll bring her to court for introductions.”  
  
“I doubt anything could stop him.” The hound sighed and rested its great head on Muir's shortened legs. The disparity in size was almost comical, but neither dwarf nor dog appeared to mind. “What troubles you, my lady?”  
  
“That obvious, is it?”  
  
“It does not take a seeing man to hear the weariness in your voice.”  
  
She frowned, eyes drawn back the flames and sparks popping along the logs within them. “I am... under some pressure by my ministers and secretaries. It seems they are under the impression that since I rescued my heart from Ravenna it is now theirs to use as they please.”  
  
“Ah.” Muir nodded. “And what is it you wish to do with it?”  
  
“I'm unsure.”  
  
“From lack of options or from too many?”  
  
Her mouth twisted. “The walls have ears indeed.”  
  
“Simple deduction, my lady. You are not the first ruler I've seen reside within the castle.” He smiled slightly. “Well, so to speak.”  
  
She huffed out a laugh. “Fair enough.”  
  
They remained quiet for a time, the only sound the popping of the fire. Silence had so often seemed oppressive over the course of her life, her cell walls echoing only with the sound of her own voice, her prayers spoken without expecting an answer and her conversations held with herself. Babbling on until she could speak no more and the terrible loneliness overtook her.  
  
It was a relief to find someone she could be comfortably silent with.  
  
It became easier then to gather her thoughts, to say, “I... I see at least two men. One is my past and the other, I think, my future.”  
  
“And your present, my lady? What of that?”  
  
She intertwined her fingers, looked at the long, pale digits. “I think the present means keeping a little of both with me,” she murmured.  
  
“Then it sounds to me like you've already reached your decision.”  
  
“Yes. Yes, I suppose I have.” She rose and dropped a kiss onto his balding head. “You're a good man, Muir.”  
  
“Only as much as I am able, my lady.” But he seemed pleased as she bid her good nights.  
  
***  
  
The only man to ever ask her what she saw after she died was her Huntsman and the only reply she could tell him was, “The cold and the deep.”  
  
Which was true, but it was an imperfect truth. She could have just as easily said, “I heard you. I felt you. I heard William cry from far away and I heard his father try to comfort him.”  
  
Or she could have said, “I saw Ravenna as a child and she broke my heart because she only grew to be the thing her mother made her, the same way I am my own mother's creation.”  
  
Or even told him, “I think it wasn't really death. I think what lies behind the veil is a secret I will never truly know until I am nothing more than dust and ash.”  
  
But there were no real answers and she was always secretly relieved she was only ever expected to make up the one.  
  
***  
  
The feast on the anniversary of her coronation was not something she planned. She in fact found it somewhat distasteful, especially since so many were still recovering from years of famine and drought. She had argued about it with, it seemed, every member of the court, including the stable boy.  
  
It took Hammond to convince her. “Sometimes, your Highness, a people need something to celebrate, even if it isn't entirely rational.”  
  
Which, after so long without any joy to be found, made a sort of sense and she allowed it. But she stuck Hammond with the preparations since, as she delighted in pointing out, it was his idea.  
  
Her vengeance was really a small and petty thing.  
  
And it wasn't, in the end, so terrible. The dwarfish men were there and Duir, it turned out, did find a wife after all, an even tinier woman named Saille. She blushed when introduced and Snow reminded herself to send her a bridal gift. Muir, she was sure, would be able to advise her on something appropriate.  
  
The women of the reed village attended, accompanied not by their children but by the scarred and maimed men who had returned to them. She could see the way they held each other close, how Anna smiled at her returned husband, Luke, even as she had to help him up, his missing leg a permanent reminder of all that had been lost. Something twisted up inside Snow's chest as she looked at them, a combination of guilt, admiration and strange, fierce pride.  
  
The wine flowed free – perhaps they would one day put a full dent into her stepmother's reserves if they were ambitious enough – and it became easier over the course of the evening to slip away from official duties to speak with those whose company she actually preferred.  
  
Anna smiled as she took a seat on the bench next to her. “Your Highness. It's good to see you again.”  
  
“And you as well. Have my builders been behaving themselves?”  
  
Anna frowned, a shadow crossing her face. “It was never necessary for you to send them. We've rebuilt before, in times of flooding.”  
  
“But it didn't flood. It burnt. That makes it my debt to repay.” She looked over to where Luke sat with the Huntsman, the two men deep in the rowdy conversations only old soldiers seemed able to entertain each other with. She wondered if anyone noticed how the Huntsman would occasionally stop laughing, eyes growing dark and sad as they looked at something in the far distance. Or how William would sometimes sit by his father and rub the other man's shoulder, massaging away the pain from an old injury.  
  
She reached up a hand to almost idly touch her cheek, wondering what it would be like to feel roughed, burned skin there as Anna did. Would Ravenna have left her alone then? Had she failed by being too afraid to face a pain that might have faded with time?  
  
“The old queen's actions are not your doing,” Anna said softly.  
  
“That's kind of you to say,” Snow said. “But if I hadn't been there -”  
  
“Your Highness, please. Don't.” She placed her hand over Snow's, gently squeezing the fingers. “We knew who you were, we knew and still we chose to welcome you. You cannot think you have the right to dictate the direction of our consciences, can you?”  
  
“No, no of course not. I simply...” She bit her lip, an old shame overcoming her. “Sometimes I see what the cost has been, and I – I think...”  
  
 _I think why did I alone come out unscathed?_  
  
The words hung between them unsaid. Anna turned to look at the man she married - caught in some story that involved a great deal of hand-waving - and from that angle, the flickering candle light gave her the illusion of twin tear tracks falling down her cheeks instead of scars.  
  
“We all have our wounds, your Highness,” she said. “Some are simply easier to see than others.”  
  
***  
  
There were some things she could never quite share with anyone, hidden things for her and her alone. How Henri used to slip her books in on the tray with her daily meal because he was illiterate and had no use for those that fell into his possession. How he liked to listen to her reading them aloud through the door to her cell and how he would always tap his foot twice to warn her if Finn was coming, so she might hide them away under her straw mattress. How she cried when he died the winter of her thirteenth year and how the following winter she was forced to burn all his books to stave off freezing. How she cried again as the fire robbed her of their stories.  
  
She told no one that she remembered the names of all the girls locked away across the hall from her. Or why she spent time seeking them out, if they lived, or at least finding their families so that they might finally know what became of their daughters and sisters and wives.  
  
She would never say that it was her clever magpies who led her to freedom. That during the night she sometimes still woke gagging to the smell of sewage and waste and sickly salty sea water. That she wondered if the white horse died in the dark forest, terrified and alone and awaiting rescue from a rider who would never return. That she hoped Finn at least showed it enough mercy to slit its throat before it drowned in the mud.  
  
And she never told a soul that she believed Ravenna's greatest cruelties came about when the woman was trying to be kind.  
  
***  
  
It took time, time to find the courage and time to find the time, but one day both time and courage finally appeared in abundance. So she called William and the Huntsman to her chambers, sitting the both of them before the fire so that if she blushed it might be blamed on the heat.  
  
“I proposed a plan to our Huntsman sometime back,” she said.  
  
“What plan?” William said as the Huntsman turned incredibly red and said, “You were drunk.”  
  
“ _In vino veritas_ ,” she replied, which had the Huntsman reddening even further and William frowning.  
  
“I feel like I've missed a conversation,” he said.  
  
“You did, a little,” she said. “Though I think you might have heard by now. On the nature of heirs and the producing thereof.”  
  
“Oh.” He glanced at the silent Huntsman, tilted his head and said, “Ah...”  
  
“The truth is, people have been fighting over my heart for years and I am tired of it. Out there, in the sun and splendor, it is for my kingdom. That is the way it must be and I have come to terms with that. But here, in the dark, it is still mine alone, to be given or hidden as I so wish.”  
  
She knelt before them, taking each of their hands in hers. She bent over William's, kissing the tips of his fingers, tongue lightly touching his archer's callouses. “You follow where I lead.” She moved to the Huntsman's hand, placed her lips upon his roughened palm. “And you guide me where I need to go.”  
  
She could hear the sharp intake of their breaths, the shifting of their clothes. She closed her eyes, took each hand to rest on her cheeks. “And that is how we find new paths.”  
  
William moved first, sliding to the floor to stay beside her, breath warm against her neck. “Snow – your Highness, I -”  
  
“No,” she said. “I'm not your queen. Not here. Please.”  
  
She heard the Huntsman kneel, felt the hand he placed on her stomach. “And if there should be a child?”  
  
“Then it's ours first, before the land's.”  
  
“There will be those who object.”  
  
“Those who object can go ha-”  
  
Her Huntsman cut her off with a kiss tasting of the forest and mead. She sighed into it, drawing him closer, as William started to place hesitant kisses along her neck. She slid her arm up so her hand twisted in his hair, barely noticing when her Huntsman moved his free hand to rest along William's leg.  
  
Her past, everything good that she could carry with her. Her future, the hope of things to come. And when she knew it was the right moment, she rose and brought both into her bedchambers, so that she could whisper their names along their bare skin, here in this place where it was just for her to say and take and give.  
  
“Snow,” Eric said, “Snow, Snow, Snow,” even as William grasped him by the neck and brought their lips together, with her still lying between them and gasping as something burst in her, bringing her over into strange new lands that she had never seen before.  
  
And when Eric tried to leave afterward, so that he might go back to being the Huntsman again, she took his hand, told him to stay and she believed he did it because Snow was asking, not the queen. He slipped back under her furs and laid his arm across her as William sighed, turning to hold her back flush against his chest.  
  
It felt warm and safe and, for the first time in her adult life, like coming home.  
  
***  
  
Some days she could still see the sorrow etched along the stones of the castle that had been both her sanctuary and prison. As she walked the halls, she thought she could hear the echoed sobbing of the victims who had stained the ground with their blood, the smell of smoke and pain and death thick enough to choke on.  
  
On those days, she would hurl herself against the walls of both her past and future, demanding that they leave hand shaped bruises along her back and arms, to take the grief and rage and terror that she could never fully scrub from her skin and accept that this was part of who she was as well.  
  
She would wake up sore and sometimes she would wake up weeping, but as she felt thick woodsman's arms surround her, heard the whispers of her oldest friend against her back, she thought maybe, in the coming years, it wouldn’t matter so much.  
  
***  
  
The greatest secret Snow White never told anyone was that she never asked herself what her father would do when contemplating a decision.  
  
Instead, she asked herself what her stepmother would do and promptly did the opposite.  
  
It seemed to be working out so far.  
  
***  
  
Re-learning to embroider was one of her side projects, something to help her relax when politics and the day-to-day requirements of the throne grew overwhelming.  
  
The needlepoint she held in her hand was supposed to be a knight killing a bear, but the bear was starting to look more and more like a rather demented rabbit. She sighed and watched her men instead, Eric sitting a touch too close to the fire in order to read in the fading light and William making a mess of her dining table as he carved out patterns on his new bow.  
  
“Is it true what they say, that I came back a little strange?” she asked, because she knew she could count on them now to tell her the truth.  
  
William looked up and blinked. Eric didn't even bother to do so, just turned another page in his book and said, “If you are, we must be doubly so.”  
  
William just shrugged when she looked to him. “Most likely.”  
  
“Well, that's alright then,” she said and returned to her needlework. Perhaps, she thought, the knight was slaying a particularly evil rabbit.


End file.
